


Shooting Flowers

by Germinal



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Blackmail, Canon Era, Character Study, Dubious Consent, Knifeplay, M/M, Oral Sex, Political Expediency, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:54:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24608761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Germinal/pseuds/Germinal
Summary: Montparnasse and Enjolras come to an arrangement. Neither of them remains entirely sure what the arrangement is.
Relationships: Enjolras/Montparnasse (Les Misérables)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 29
Collections: Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020





	Shooting Flowers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ancslove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancslove/gifts).



This is a situation unbefitting a gentleman and artist of his calibre. To begin with, he’s had to venture out before he’s at his best, before the sun has properly fallen. For another thing, this blade should be out slitting throats, or pocket-linings at the least, not hidden away under a café table, its shine and sharpness as unappreciated and underused as Montparnasse’s own.

Itching for entertainment, he lets the knife gently prick the pad of his thumb as he watches Enjolras. The boy is engaged in conversation like it’s close-combat, his verbal spars and parries with opponents winning occasional applause. Easy pickings from an enraptured audience.

They have a common enemy in the law, in authority, in the way things are. Enjolras’ approach to improving their lot is novel, and intriguing in some aspects, but always looks to Montparnasse far too much like hard work.

He hears him talk about necessity, and Montparnasse reflects on what he's lately learnt about exactly what Enjolras needs. He hears him talk of discipline and Montparnasse reflects that he’d do nicely on his knees, kept in line with the flick of a riding-crop or the bite of a cane, or the slice of the blade in his pocket.

This is their third assignation in as many months, though now they exchange other currency than cold supplies and cash. Montparnasse is still considering what greater payment he can extract from it.

* * *

The arrangement had started business-like enough, with Montparnasse dispatched to pass on the location of a certain cache of bullets for whatever bleeding-hearted havoc these boys are planning. He’d kept clear of knowing any particulars, let Enjolras buy his drinks and look reprovingly at him across the table in the café's corner, the cold disdain from such a striking face going somewhat to his head.

When he can take no more pretty preaching on the duties of youth to help forge the glorious future, he finishes his glass, brings the conversation back to bullets, and asks for payment in advance.

Enjolras bites his lower lip. “I can’t convince you, then, to do this as a contribution to the betterment of your fellow man?”

Montparnasse laughs heartily, appreciating a good joke, until he realises the boy is serious, his blue eyes wide in supplication that must work like a charm on other less imaginative gents. Then the sheer cheek of the suggestion makes him laugh harder.

“What has my fellow man done to deserve that? What does he do for the betterment of me?”

“It’s a question of means,” Enjolras says curtly. “Give what you can now, and wait, if you must, for what can be done for you.”

Montparnasse sniffs contemptuously, and looks Enjolras slowly up and down.

“And what can _you_ do for me, pretty-boy?”

That gets him, as he knew it would. The softly whispered word slides under his skin like a knife-tip.

To be young, well-dressed and remarkable-looking, in a world that’s tediously plain when not arrestingly ugly, is a burden they both must share. That good looks entail not being taken seriously, Montparnasse knows well. But he also knows it makes it easier to shift between being predator and prey, and is not sure if Enjolras has yet learnt this useful lesson, despite the scant few years’ experience he has on Montparnasse.

Montparnasse presses his advantage, driving his knee between both of Enjolras’ beneath the table.

“I can get money any day of the week, from any revolting old drunk in the street.”

He leans closer and deliberately licks his lips. “How about sweetening the deal some other way?”

It takes a moment, but Enjolras recovers well, meeting Montparnasse’s dark eyes with nothing more than a look of cool, distasteful calculation. He glances around at the emptying room, the dwindling clientele, the oncoming twilight outside.

Enjolras sighs. “I can’t convince you to accept another form of payment?”

Montparnasse grins. The boy’s admirably pragmatic. He wonders if he’s used to treating his body as a bargaining chip, an enticement or a way to seal a deal, the same way old man Thénardier treats his daughters. Even if he’s not, even if this is a first for him, the prospect of getting his hands on untouched goods is hardly any less appealing.

“Not now you can’t, darling.”

He shrugs on his frock-coat, gives its fine cut a practiced ostentatious stroke, and picks up his hat.

“I’ll see you round the back when you’ve said your goodbyes. Don’t keep me waiting, will you.”

The shadowed alley behind the Musain is beneath his dignity, too, but it’s worthwhile to see how much more it is beneath Enjolras’. He wastes no time in dropping to his knees but cannot hide a flash of annoyance as the spotless linen of his trousers hits the filth of the street. Behind the curtain of his hair, Enjolras’ face is flushed as he wraps his fingers around the length of Montparnasse’s cock.

He presses his lips to the head and licks tentatively, eyes wide and fixed on Montparnasse, his mouth opening to take his cock in more with caution at first, and then with grim determination. His technique is workmanlike - either he's called upon to do this kind of bartering with weary regularity, or else he's only ever read about it. But while it’s hardly the most physically enjoyable of these encounters, Montparnasse takes pleasure in further dishevelling his golden curls, making him gag with a sharp thrust of his narrow hips, calling him a whore just to stoke the banked fires in his eyes.

He comes before he’s quite ready to, and misses the chance to properly mess up that hair and that hot, sullen mouth, to watch Enjolras have to wipe himself clean with that pristine cravat. Still, he thinks, as Enjolras gets to his feet and draws a hand across his lips, there may be other opportunities.

“I’m obliged to you,” Enjolras says, absurd in his stiff decorum when Montparnasse’s spend still coats the back of his throat. “If there is anything more we have need of – Bahorel knows where to find you.”

Grinning, Montparnasse makes him a haughty, ridiculous bow, doffing his hat and letting it trail along the dirt of the alleyway. It’s worth it for the look on his face.

“And I know where to find you, I hope.”

Before they go their separate ways he slips the folded note with the ammunition’s location between Enjolras’ fingers, watches him quickly tuck it away as though it’s an end to the matter.

* * *

That had been then. This is their sixth or seventh, perhaps, exchange of what they still call information.

It is only the second time that Enjolras has deigned to visit Montparnasse’s lodgings. He shows up much later than arranged, complaining of having had to skirmish with provocateurs and suspected spies. He does little to shift Montparnasse’s conviction that revolutionaries are all raving madmen, cheerfully inviting on themselves the kind of trouble that others have to spend their less comfortable lives avoiding. He has to scrub the spots of dried blood from his hands at Montparnasse's wash-stand and slow his breathing at the window, intently scanning the street outside, before he’ll let Montparnasse beckon him over to the bed.

Unbuttoning his own shirt and then Enjolras’, Montparnasse presses a kiss to his grazed knuckles, tasting the remnants of blood beneath his own perfumed soap and water. He feels his clenched hand begin to tremble. He is deeply and deliciously discomfited by Montparnasse’s appreciation of how adept, how natural he is at violence when he deems it necessary. At length, Enjolras snatches his hand away and Montparnasse rolls his eyes but lets the issue rest. For his insurrection business to succeed, Enjolras will need to learn to take some pleasure in the art of the kill.

Enjolras scorns luxury, too, but he clearly appreciates Montparnasse’s attempts at it, his frayed silk cushions and the dubiously-acquired expensive wine of which he only ever drinks a glass while watching Montparnasse indulge, staining his red lips redder with every mouthful. He is reclined now, looking almost languid, on his back with his fall-front unbuttoned, a sprawl of white and gold across the dark crumpled sheets in the grey light of dawn.

It vexes Montparnasse that the splendour which in his case is mostly artifice at heart, is nature in Enjolras. Propped on one elbow, he wraps his hand around Enjolras’ cock and strokes and squeezes, going even rougher than they both tend to prefer.

“You know I don’t like being kept waiting. The next time you drag me to one of your blasted cafés I’ll just bend you over the table and make you scream in front of all those bourgeois stiffs – make you shoot your load across your lists of names and your maps of the sections – ”

He enjoys the instant pay-off of the warning glance Enjolras shoots him, less from the position he’s in than from the realisation of what information he might have neglected to hide. Neither of their defences are ever quite down, though Montparnasse thinks he’s come closer than most to lowering certain of Enjolras’.

He presses a quick, firm kiss to Enjolras’ mouth, both from desire and to prevent him opening it to threaten or, worse, lecture him.

“Don’t worry, _cheri_ , I’m not about to let your secrets slip – any of them.”

He takes his hand from Enjolras’ cock, leaving him gasping, and picks his blade up in the same hand, letting it rest against the alabaster column of Enjolras’ throat as, but for his quick and shallow breathing, he goes statue-still beneath him.

“Any detached observer, don’t you think, seeing you on your back for me like this, might find it a more interesting revelation than wherever place a barricade might be about to spring up next? I'm a bit amazed, myself, the criminal depths you're willing to plumb for the sake of your fellow man - "

He's not really all that amazed, and thinks Enjolras knows it. He's lost count of the number of outwardly upright, tightly-wound gents who've been pleased to let knowing young men like Montparnasse dismantle them and bring them low for an hour or two. But he likes the effect of this needling on them both: there are spots of high colour in Enjolras’ cheeks – he blushes gorgeously, of course he does – and he darts his gaze away but a smile plays at the corners of his lips.

"I'm finding it a bearable arrangement," he says, "providing its main utility for me remains between ourselves. It's safer to be thought of as dissolute than dissident right now."

Montparnasse grins and nods his head. "I’ll give you anything that's useful and give nothing else away, as long as you keep offering your services in exchange for mine.”

Montparnasse holds the blade against his collarbone, presses with practiced expertise until a bead of blood wells up, then slides the flat of it downward, watching Enjolras writhe in response to the glide of cold steel against his skin. He takes Enjolras' cock in hand again and gives a few rough twists, pricking the tip of the blade repeatedly across his chest and soothing each shallow cut with his tongue, until Enjolras’ building gasps end in a soft bitten-off cry and warm seed pulsing between Montparnasse’s fingers.

He gives only a brief look of reproach when Montparnasse wipes his hand off on his still-clothed thigh.

“Are you quite finished?” he asks, as though all this has been purely for Montparnasse’s benefit.

Montparnasse brings his hand up to Enjolras’ mouth, watching him suck and lick his fingers clean with only the slightest push of encouragement.

“There, slut. You like the injury and insult as much as the rest of it, don’t you? You’d be a perfect libertine if only you’d let yourself – ”

Too much? Enjolras shoves him off, but only to turn and take a mouthful of wine from the half-full glass beside the bed.

“And to answer your question – I’m only half-started.” Montparnasse lies back against the pillows and palms his own cock through his trousers. “You can return the favour however you like, but do it now.”

Enjolras drains his glass. “Talk to me first. Tell me how you’ve spent the last few weeks.”

Montparnasse gives a breathless burst of laughter. “I’ve – spent them. There’s little enough of my doings that can interest you.”

He nods towards his crotch. “Get on with it.”

Enjolras moves to straddle his slim hips, brushing Montparnasse’s hands away and drawing out his cock himself. He strokes it to full hardness, making Montparnasse close his eyes in lazy anticipation and settle back, folding his hands behind his head.

He feels the wet plush heat of Enjolras’ lips around his cock, the obedient pressure of his tongue. He is less tentative, more willing to experiment, than he’d been all those months ago behind the Musain, which is more than fine with Montparnasse. He’s got his rebel well-trained.

Enjolras pulls off and Montparnasse awaits his mouth returning for another long, slow suck along his length. This doesn’t happen.

He opens his eyes to look up, petulantly, and sees Enjolras looking equally expectant, a combative set to his jaw.

“Come, we both know this is _quid pro quo_. What do you have for me?”

He shifts his hips, the sudden friction against Montparnasse’s cock making him groan at an embarrassing pitch.

Montparnasse heaves a sigh, and contemplates simply taking Enjolras by the throat, holding him down and fucking his mouth at the point of a blade. His discarded knife is surely within reach –

Enjolras, with an implacable expression, leans down and traps his wrists against the pillows before he can move, his weight keeping Montparnasse pinned to the bed.

“Come on, _cheri_ , if you like,” he says, his smile unsettling, and starts to slowly roll his hips again. “Give me some dispatch from the underworld, enlighten me.”

Montparnasse stares up at him, furiously aroused and desperate to spend. “For fuck’s sake - there’s nothing I can – wait.”

He grapples with some hazy nights of, as per usual, observation sharper than he’s given credit for. “I’ve an... acquaintance, in the Rue Saint-Denis. She says she’s heard nothing but complaints and talk of riots from the workers for a week past, though over what in particular I can’t fathom – that’s your department. Anyway there’s tinder there, if you care to set a spark.”

Enjolras nods to himself, shifting his weight and releasing Montparnasse. “They can be given a push if they need it. Thank you.”

“You know well enough how to thank me,” Montparnasse snaps, and shoves Enjolras’ head back downwards as he brings his hips up.

* * *

A few weeks later, with one luckless fellow left for dead at the edge of the Luxembourg and two pockets weighed down with coin, Montparnasse’s evening is going very well. He has walked long enough to start to work off the surge of excitement in his veins when he finds his wandering has taken him to the outskirts of Enjolras’ territory, and he can think of no good reason not to head towards the boy's usual haunts. The streets have been quiet these last few days and Montparnasse has nothing in particular to offer him, but he looks forward to calling in his standing debt to round the evening off.

Montparnasse should tell Enjolras at some point that he is no good at being hard to track down. Through a wine-shop’s window Montparnasse makes out the flash of his hair, and watches as he carries two pitchers to a table and takes a seat with a smile that is more brilliant and less guarded than any Montparnasse has been granted so far. The group of men he’s with, looking acceptably to atrociously dressed, are clustered close together, but the usual furtive glances and intent, wild-eyed debate look to be absent, replaced by something more relaxed, convivial, almost shockingly so. Of course Enjolras must _have_ friends as well as associates, Montparnasse considers, but the fact in practice is almost more unlikely than in theory.

He intends to merely go on watching through the glass, with the same admiration he might grant a well-put-together shop window display, but then the spring rain comes on, warm and light but relentless, and forces him to duck inside for the sake of his clothing. 

It is not long before Enjolras spots him too, and sets his glass down, his face already turned tense and severe. By the time he reaches Montparnasse’s table all the barriers are back up.

“What are you doing here? Do you have something to tell me?”

Montparnasse smiles, considers the weapons at his disposal, and picks the one that’s most enjoyable to wield.

“Only that I’m having a delightful evening out, and that I’d be obliged if you would join me for the end of it.”

Enjolras gives him a Look.

“That would disoblige _me_. Can’t it wait until another time?”

“It could, I suppose – in fact, it will. But I think the terms of our arrangement mean you’re going to have to cut your evening short.”

Montparnasse makes a show of glancing over Enjolras’ shoulder to the table he’s left.

“Or shall I tell your circle over there about the kinds of things you like? The way you get your useful information whispered in your ear when you’re flat on your back with your knees up?”

Enjolras holds his gaze. “They’d hardly find your words a creditable source over my own. But, I suppose, now that you’re here, you won’t leave?”

Montparnasse smiles widely. “Not without you with me, no. I’m lodged in your flesh like a thorn, I’m afraid.” 

He would make some further nauseating remark about the roses that bloom in Enjolras’ cheeks, but doesn’t want to overplay his hand.

“Very well,” says Enjolras heavily. “Go out and let me find some excuse to give.”

He takes his time about it. Back at the window, Montparnasse watches him finish his wine and bid farewell, looks covetously at the warm words of goodbye, clasped hands and close embraces while he shivers in the rain.

The walk to Montparnasse’s room is inconveniently long, and by the time they reach his street the rain has drenched them both. Montparnasse, complaining bitterly to the skies as he feels the damp seep through the lining of his coat, his black curls dripping water and pomade down his neck, is almost thinking better of the whole affair when Enjolras pulls him into the doorway to his building and kisses him, hard and demanding, both hands fisted in his silk cravat. It cannot simply be to shut him up.

“You’re glad you chose my company, then?” he chuckles, when Enjolras lets him breathe.

“I don’t yet know,” Enjolras says, and follows him into the dark of his building.

Once indoors they strip their wet clothes off and dry the rest in a heated struggle against the bedsheets, their teeth and fingernails doing more work than lips and tongues. Enjolras' mouth is hot, and tastes of wine, blood and rainwater as he grinds against Montparnasse's thigh.

Montparnasse, his nerves still singing at the memory of the night’s activities and at getting to have Enjolras at his beck and call, eventually gets him on his back and rides him hard, breathless and jubilant with one hand wrapped around his throat, dragging Enjolras to climax a quick moment after himself.

He lets himself fall slack against the sheets, staring at the ceiling, his head swimming like it does when he’s drunk more than he can handle. The room's cold air makes him feel peculiarly undone and exposed without his finery, like an animal that's been winkled out of its protective shell. He pulls the bedsheets around him.

The bed dips. Enjolras, to his astonishment, is sitting up and beginning to dress, glancing through the window to where the rain is dying off.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“We are concluded, here. I’m going to finish the night among friends,” Enjolras says blandly, as though he has remembered who he is – worse, who they both are.

Montparnasse, despite himself, is too exhausted to make him stay. “Enjoy yourself, then,” he manages sourly. 

Enjolras looks back from the doorway with an expression somewhere between fascination and disgust.

“If you’d only look beyond your own profit, and see the greater profit in – ”

His persistence is amazing. Montparnasse looks back at the ceiling as he waits for him to leave. 

“Don't try and bring me to the light. I’m very comfortable where I am.”

“I can see that. Well - until the next time, then.”

Montparnasse studies the door for some time after it has fallen closed. He sleeps well, but wakes disturbed by an indistinct resentment, some thorn in his own flesh, that there was somehow less satisfaction in last night’s transaction than there should have been. 

* * *

Enjolras pays him no more visits for over a month. Montparnasse is dismayed to find himself counting the weeks, and then the days, feeling unaccountably bereft at this neglect, and missing the visual and physical pleasure of having Enjolras in his bed.

After another few empty evenings, he takes even greater care than usual with dressing, ensuring his glamour is impenetrable. Then he loiters for an hour outside the Musain until closing time and collars Enjolras as he leaves. 

The crowd that streams before him is fairly crackling with anticipation and the look of fierce exultation in Enjolras’ eyes makes Montparnasse catch his breath, then curse himself for it.

Looking predictably displeased to see him, as though he has a thousand more important things to do, Enjolras drags him around the building’s corner into shadow and speaks anxiously and low.

“What is it?”

“Well – nothing, if you must know. I haven’t seen you for some time. I hear things are closer all the time to kicking off, there must be something you’re in need of?”

Enjolras gazes at him blankly, as though he is an unfamiliar object that he's been told once had a use. 

“We’re prepared. We’ve all the lines of supply we need – and from sources we can trust, hence you’re excluded.”

He looks at Montparnasse more closely. “Or have you had some change of heart – will you be taking arms alongside – ”

Montparnasse flaps a hand irritably. “Of course I won’t. I only thought – that we might still have something to exchange.”

Enjolras only looks further taken aback, to Montparnasse’s further irritation.

“I’m sorry to have inconvenienced you – we don’t. The stockpiles are complete.”

Montparnasse almost groans aloud at his obtuseness. The logical thing to do would be to hit below the belt, to threaten to spill Enjolras’ plans and inclinations all over the street, unless… and there logic deserts him. Instead Montparnasse shrugs, kicks at the dirt beneath his feet, and waits stubbornly for Enjolras to come to him of his own accord rather than being coerced. He is appalled to hear the half-sulky, half-beseeching tone his voice has taken on.

“Still, I know things – I know people. A friend who serves wine and slops out in the places policemen and the guard drink – she hears things. I have - there are things that I can offer.”

There is a look of dawning comprehension on Enjolras’ face. He lays a hand on Montparnasse’s shoulder as though he is indulging an out-of-sorts grisette. His eyes take on a look of patronising pity that makes Montparnasse want to carve them out.

“All right. If I call on you tomorrow evening – will I hear things from you?”

“Yes,” says Montparnasse, feeling pathetically relieved, and bites his lip on anything more he might find himself saying.

He watches as Enjolras slips back onto the street, his eyes already fixed more on the dubious promise of the future than on what's right there in front of him.

He returns home and is restless at the time that has to stretch until the next night, and lies upon his bed feeling wretched and useless as a blunted blade. He sets his mind sharply upon the prospect of their next encounter, determining to regain control by making Enjolras beg, making him scream, and settling their account for good. He is unsure when he began to feel more like Enjolras’ debtor than his creditor, and he is even less sure that he won't grow to miss this feeling once it's gone. 

**Author's Note:**

> Treat written for Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020, for ancslove. I hope you like it!


End file.
